This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

If so, the majestic Russian figure skater exited the spotlight with Evgenian stagecraft: Gold and gone.

The veteran show-master had just come out under the klieg lights at the Ice Palace to perform his short program in the men’s singles competition. He looked clearly out of sorts, rolling his shoulders, wincing, kneading the small of his chronically ailing back.

He motioned to the judges for a moment’s indulgence. Most spectators thought perhaps there was something awry with Plushenko’s music. But he stopped again, hands on hips, shaking his signature block tresses.

Couldn’t go through with it, in too much pain, apparently, and waved goodbye instead to the suddenly hushed crowd.

Article Continued Below

The 31-year-old had fallen on a quad during practice Wednesday, after leading Russia to gold in the inaugural team event on the weekend. He landed awkwardly again — looked more like a strain in the groin muscles — on a triple Axel in the warm-up Thursday night.

Left the ice, spoke to his coach and departed, stomping down the tunnel into the medical room.

“Do not judge him by tonight,” pleaded long-time coach Alexei Mishin, facing down reporters in the mixed zone. “Judge him by his history. Be kind.”

Plushenko, Olympic champion in 2006 and twice silver, including four years ago in Vancouver, has had a dozen surgeries on his problematic back. Injury caused him to miss all of the 2013 Grand Prix season, though he competed at nationals and came second.

The fall in practice, said Mishin, had opened up a three-inch gash, just above one of the operation scars on his back, where he now has plastic rather than bone.

“Yesterday I fell on the quad toe in training and I felt a problem in my back,” Plushenko explained when he reappeared to address journalists. “Today I went into training to see what I could do but I couldn’t jump. I skated maybe seven minutes maximum. I tried and tried and tried today.”

In the warm-up, he did a triple loop and triple Lutz but was clearly uncomfortable. “After the first triple Axel I stepped out and felt terrible pain in my leg and the second one was just a terrible landing. I couldn’t feel my legs after it.

“It hurt and that was it. I had to withdraw.”

Plushenko had landed quads in both his short and long program in the team event. As the only male singles Russian skater at these Olympics, he would have been required to skate four times — a massive task for even a healthy, young skater.

Mishin provided confusing and contradictory answers when asked why Plushenko had not withdrawn earlier, which would have allowed Russia to name a replacement, no doubt national title holder Maxim Kovtun, the up-and-coming 18-year-old who deserved the Sochi gig but was arbitrarily passed over by Russian skating authorities, who preferred to roll the dice with proven Plushenko.

Under Olympic rules, a replacement had to be declared before the draw for the men’s skate.

Mishin said the deadline was 8 p.m. Wednesday, at which point, the old coach claimed, Plushenko was sore but confident he’d be fit to compete. By 11 a.m. Thursday, Plushenko was in agony and the chance replace him with Kovtun had come and gone.

Some skeptics will not believe any of it, convinced Plushenko had always intended — complicit with the Russian skating federation — to skate only in the team event. Russian reporters here were convinced of it, emphasizing the cutthroat rivalry among cabals of skaters (more precisely, their coaches) based in St. Petersburg and Moscow.

There’s certainly no love lost between Mishin and the formidable Tatiana Tarasova, who coaches Kovtun. At least one notable Russian journalist with decades of experience covering the sport suggested Mishin would rather have chewed glass than opened the door for Tarasova’s protégé as Olympics replacement.

Such are the conspiracies of figure skating.

“I am sorry for my fans and for everybody,” said Plushenko. “But I tried till the end. I almost cried. It’s hard, believe me.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com